Observation of nuclear track in organic material by atomic force microscopy in real time during etching

The developments of Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) allow to investigated sol id surfaces with a nanometer scale. These techniques are useful methods all owing direct observation of surface morphologies. Particularly in the nucle ar track fields, they offer a new tool to give many new informations on tra ck formation. In this paper we present the preliminary results of a new use of this technique to characterize continuously the formation of the reveal ed track in a cellulose nitrate detector (LR115) after an alpha particle ir radiation. For that, a specific cell has been used to observe, by nano-obse rvations, the evolution of track shapes simultaneously with chemical treatm ent;. Thus, the track shape evolution has been studied; visualizing the evo lution of the tracks in real time, in situ during the chemical etching proc ess.